School district will stop asking students to draw themselves as slaves.

A school district in Texas will stop asking students to draw themselves as a slave after a parent complained that it’s not something her child should be forced to “relive” for an assignment. Tonya Jennings, of Austin, said her 12-year-old daughter came home from Four Points Middle School last week with an assignment instructing the...

Time: 13:16&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Date: 13.02.2018

Tonya Jennings, of Austin, said her 12-year-old daughter came home from Four Points Middle School last week with an assignment instructing the seventh grader to draw a picture of herself as a slave as part of a unit on the Civil War, KVUE reported.

“There’s nothing about slavery that I would want any child, regardless of color, to have to relive,” Jennings told the station.

The assignment, “Making Sense With the Senses,” also asked students to write a sentence that described their surroundings as if they were a slave in Texas during the 1850s by using each of the five senses. Jennings said she was simply taken aback once reading the details of the assignment.

“I turn it, and then, of course, my eye is drawn to the title, ‘Making Sense With the Senses,’” she said. “And then I read the four points. And I stopped after reading, ‘Draw a picture of yourself as a slave.’ I just stopped right there.”

Jennings said she realized she needed to explain to her daughter want the assignment was trying to accomplish, although she acknowledged not getting the point either.

“It is completely out of place,” Jennings continued. “It just doesn’t even go with the packet at all. To ask my child to put herself in a situation where she has to draw herself as a slave was an issue that just, you know, all the way up the board.”

A spokesman for the Leander Independent School District told the station in a statement that state curriculum requires seventh-graders to explain reasons for Texas’ involvement in the Civil War, including slavery and tariffs.

“The state also asks students to be able to identify points of view from the historical context surrounding an event and the frame of reference that influenced the participants,” the statement read.

Jennings had a meeting scheduled with school officials on Monday to discuss the matter, KVUE reports.

But the district won’t be using the assignment in the future, spokesperson Corey Ryan told the Houston Chronicle.

“It’s not something the school is going to keep doing,” Ryan told the newspaper.